


What We Remember

by Yeomanrand



Category: Fringe
Genre: Family, Gen, Memories, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-31
Updated: 2011-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-15 06:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://leupagus.livejournal.com/>Leupagus'</a> <a href=">Promptfest '11: Mary Sue Edition</a></p><p>Astrid Farnsworth, her first memory</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/gifts).



When people ask Astrid Farnsworth for her first childhood memory, she either deflects or lies. Not because her first memory is a bad one, just that anything she can go far enough back to call a "first" memory is at best a blur; fingers tangled in her mother's hair, being far too hot wrapped in a blanket and someone's arms.

And the first memory that comes to her when she's asked, well, that one's hers, and she doesn't share it with anyone.

She's walking along a beach, the rocks gritty-hard beneath her bare feet, and her Ompa is walking next to her, her tiny hand wrapped in his gentle, broad one. He has his shoes on, and six-year-old Astrid doesn't understand: what's the point of going to the beach if you're not going to squish water between your toes?

She's got her head down, looking for a pretty rock or seashells or maybe even the tiny crabs or sand-fleas she knows are down there when he says, "Look at the big caterpillar, honey."

Excited, she searches around both their feet for the wooly black shape, wanting to pick it up and ever-so-gently stroke its back; thinking that so near the ocean is a strange place for a caterpillar to be. But she doesn't see anything, and she looks up into her Ompa's smiling face.

"Where?" she says.

"Right there," he answers, pointing, and she follows his hand out past the big yellow construction hauler, wondering how he could possibly see something so small so far away.

He doesn't enlighten her, and it doesn't matter because she's six and a few minutes later she's showing him a piece of ocean-washed green glass, and they're both happy.

These days, she smiles every time she sees a bright yellow heavy hauler or a tiny black wooly caterpillar, and thinks about her Ompa and how you never know what you're going to come to treasure.

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been beta'd at all -- concrit welcome.


End file.
